From Roethke's notebooks: "An eager young coed was poised with her pencil. What is the most interesting phenomenon in American poetry, Mr. Roethke? What I do next, he said, abandoning her for a ham sandwich. My Gaad, he's rude, she said. No, he's just hungry. His tapeworm just had a nervous breakdown."
After the initial excitement, dissertation writing is proving to be more difficult than anticipated. The more material I gather around me, the more like speculative bullshit my hunches seem. But even though I feel like I don't have any ideas and I don't know anything, on the plus side, for research and for teaching I'm reading and rereading poetry and the epiphenomena of poetry and feeling my appetite for it whetted rather than diminished by stress and obligation.
Speaking of appetite, I found the quote above while trolling Roethke's notebooks looking for inspiration for my first chapter and, despite its sexism, I find "his tapeworm just had a nervous breakdown" a kind of awesome explanation for unruly hungers.
In further "the lighter side of sexist [or fascist, whatever] poets" news, I was pleased to discover when rereading Ezra Pound for teaching a sentiment I agree with heartily:
"Winter is icummen in,
Lhude sing Goddamm."
1 comment:
I wish sometime I could have a tapeworm... at least to have an excuse to eat :)
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